Amid unprecedented demonstrations against restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Chinese authorities said they were stepping up their campaign to vaccinate the elderly.
The relatively low vaccination rate among the elderly is a major obstacle to China’s easing of its “zero Covid” strategy.
How many elderly people have received the vaccine?
China has acknowledged that there are relatively low rates of Covid vaccination among the elderly, who are more likely to develop serious complications or die if they catch the virus, than younger age groups.
In April this year, official data showed that just 20 percent of those over the age of 80 received two doses of the vaccine plus a booster dose, while fewer than 50 percent of those aged between 70 and 79 years old belonged to the same category. .
The latest data released by the Chinese authorities, which came at a time when protests against the lockdown measures were erupting across the country, indicate a 40 percent increase in the number of people over the age of 80 who received all the doses needed, including the booster dose…
Vaccination rates of the elderly in China are much lower than their counterparts in both the US and UK, for example.
Official data released in the UK in November indicated that 80% of over 80s in England had received a booster dose in the previous three months.
China has also announced a plan to increase vaccination rates among the elderly.
Media reports indicate that China has set a goal to ensure that 90% of people over the age of 80 receive the first two doses of the vaccine or the booster dose by the end of January.
Why weren’t older people vaccinated?
The head of China’s Covid expert group, Professor Liang Wannian, told the BBC that a reluctance to vaccinate the elderly was among the problems.
She says, “Many older adults have certain diseases. They think it won’t be safe for them to get the vaccine. But it’s actually safe.”
Unlike other countries that vaccinate the elderly first, China prioritized people of working age when vaccination campaigns began in late 2020.
Lockdowns in Beijing: Public opposition to restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 grows
It has also tested its vaccines overseas, in countries with mostly young populations, as well as telling older Chinese that there isn’t enough data on vaccine efficacy and safety to recommend them.
Healthcare infrastructure is also very important to vaccination campaigns, says Professor George Liu of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Professor Liu says local communities in China lack such an infrastructure.
“Unlike vaccination plans for children, local health facilities do not have a comprehensive list of names of the elderly and vaccination schedules,” he adds.
Confidence in locally produced vaccines has also been undermined by a series of health scandals that have erupted in recent years. Those scandals included problems with the safety and manufacturing standards of the rabies, diphtheria and tetanus vaccines.
Are Chinese-made vaccines effective?
China has developed and manufactured its own vaccines, which use an inactivated virus to train the body to fight the virus as a whole.
While effective, they are not as effective as the mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines used in other countries, which target the important part of the virus that infects cells in the body.
Research indicates that two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine confer 90% protection against serious illness or death, but the percentage achieved by two doses of the Sinovac vaccine, which is one of the most widely used Chinese vaccines, is only 70%.
Also, the long periods of lockdown in China have meant less mixing of people.
This in turn means that those who received the vaccine were also less exposed to the virus and therefore benefited less from what is called “hybrid immunity” – the protection the body gets through a combination of the vaccine and infection with the virus itself.
BBC health and disinformation correspondent Rachel Schreyer says: “That immune wall that gets built … through exposure.” [للفيروس] Of course and getting effective vaccines is what made Covid something most other countries in the world are now ready to live with.
Furthermore, the emergence of new strains of the Omicron mutant has also spread among vaccinated people, which weakens the possibility of eradicating the virus.
In the early stages of vaccination campaigns during the outbreak, China maximized its efforts to produce a vaccine against the Corona virus.
And last year it said it had produced half of the global stock of Covid vaccines that existed at the time.
Therefore, its reluctance to use vaccines developed in other countries is not surprising.
Germany has urged China to consider using mRNA vaccines developed in the West. At present, these vaccines are difficult to obtain in China, as they are only available to foreign residents of the country.
China is currently believed to be developing its own vaccine using mRNA technology, but it’s unclear when that vaccine will be ready for use.
